UCLA establishes COVID-19 pandemic-response training program

The initiative is a campus-wide effort involving faculty and staff from the Fielding School of Public Health and UCLA Extension

UCLA

Brad Smith | May 13, 2020

A team at UCLA is training thousands of individuals across the state in public health techniques and strategies, including contact tracing, case investigation and administration, in order to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

The training program — co-led by the California Department of Public Health, UC San Francisco and UCLA — represents the next stage in California’s statewide response to the COVID-19 pandemic: helping prepare residents for an emergence from safer-at-home orders.

The initiative is a campus-wide effort involving faculty and staff from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and UCLA Extension. Together, the two schools are managing the training program, known statewide as the COVID-19 Virtual Training Academy. Statewide, there is an anticipated need to train 10,000 to 20,000 new contact tracers in order to effectively relax California’s stay-at-home orders.

The initial training cohort includes approximately 550 current public employees with applicable skills, including language abilities, and up-to-date background checks. That will increase to about 1,000 per week as the program ramps up, the organizers said.